Winner of the 2026 Terry J. Cox Poetry Award
Christine Hemp’s career has been braided from two strands: 1) writing – poetry, essays, a memoir – and 2) helping countless students, of all ages, experience the joy of that endeavor.
Her work has aired on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” and appeared in the New York Times, Iowa Review, Harvard Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, and anthologies published by Simon & Schuster and Yale University Press. One of her poems was sent by NASA on a mission to monitor the birthing of stars! Her poetry chapbook, That Fall, was selected for the New Women’s Voices Series at Finishing Line Press. She is the author of a memoir, Wild Ride Home (Arcade, 2020).
In the second strand of her work, Christine has taught writing to undergraduates at Harvard University and the University of New Mexico; adults at the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival, Seattle’s Hugo House, and the U.S. Navy; high school students and first graders in New Hampshire and Washington state, all with the aim of helping them find their voice through the written word. At the London Metropolitan Police, she has worked with officers and youth offenders, using poetry they wrote as a tool for crime prevention through better understanding. She has shared her passion for poetry with tourists and national park rangers as poet-in-residence at Mt. Rainier, Capulin Volcano, and Voyageurs National Parks. She was a speaker for Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau with her talk “From Homer to #hashtags: Our Changing Language.”
The tone and topics of Christine’s poems cover a wide range, from the mystical to the whimsical, from commentary on current culture clashes to the voices of mythological figures from antiquity. While many of her poems explore the darkness of the soul and our times, her ultimate outlook is optimistic. Like Orpheus in one of her recent poems, she looks for things that will help us rise above “the pounding resonance of ‘under’.” Such sources of hope can be found in the mysteries of the natural world; the tangible pleasures of daily life; the wonders of childhood and of romance; the satisfaction of manual labor; the blessings of family; the stories of individuals, both ancient and modern. As poet Marie Howe said of her memoir Wild Ride Home: “How is it possible to read a book with so much death in it and so much joy?”
Christine’s awards include two Barbara Deming Money for Women grants, the Donald Murray Award for creative non-fiction, a Vermont Studio Center residency, and the Harvard Extension School James E. Conway Award for Excellence in Teaching Writing. She was 1st Runner-Up in the Iowa Review Award for Literary Non-Fiction and has been a finalist or semi-finalist for a number of poetry awards. She is a graduate of Willamette University and the Bread Loaf School of English, and lives on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.
Oh, and if Christine’s work reflects the braiding of two related endeavors, she hasn’t actually WORN a braid since she was in the 4th grade.
